Class Note 1987

For more than 15 years Oregon resident and “soon-to-be empty-nester” Christine (Foley) Kollmorgen’s “most cherished gift from Dartmouth” has been an annual getaway with a group of “amazingly dear ’87 ladies”: Lisa (Sweeney) Caputo, Wendy Chronister, Liz (Spear) Deakin, Allison (Obermann) Exall, Diane (DeLuca) Gabianelli, Pam Haering, Jennifer (Lane) Hamlin, Anne Kubik, Kathleen (Joyce) Kusiak, Lauren Schwartz, Carolyn (Negley) Wester, and Ellen (Procter) Wilson. “While we were not all interconnected in college, we have become closer than ever through the years and supported each other through the ups and downs of the deliciously messy business of navigating our family lives, important relationships, and careers,” Christine said. Thinking back on her time at Dartmouth, Christine misses “having close and authentic friends around me all the time” and “being able to run 10 miles without aching joints or worrying about an injury!”

When I drag my creaky, chronically injured self out to do what inevitably ends up being a slow shuffle rather than what most people would call a run, I think of Esther Schrader, whom I have not seen since we were both at Michele Rivard’s wedding many moons ago. On our Sophomore Summer jogs around Occom, Esther encouraged me to psychologically outwit the rolling terrain, and her advice—take smaller strides and pick up your pace on hills—is what I hear in my head today. I don’t know whether Esther is still outwitting hills in Chevy Chase, Maryland, but she is a communications writer for the World Bank and other nonprofits. Esther recently visited her daughter at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and saw Allison (Bleyler) McDonald’s name in the local paper as a member of the public school board. “I soon found myself in Allison’s living room, talking about her life with husband Jock McDonald,” Esther said, “and I am happy to say we saw each other again a few months later when Allison was in D.C. for a conference.” Esther also has “spent some lively times with Dominique Cone and her family at their Colorado ski house” and, on her way to drop daughter Emily off at Stanford University for her freshman year, plans to visit with frequent Bay Area mini-reunion attendee Stephanie “Stevie” Losee in San Francisco.

Segueing from mini-reunions to 2018-19 Dartmouth College Fund news, class head agents Karyn (Wienski) Calcano and Peter Murane report that the ’87s raised more than $802,000, with 35.3 percent of the class making a gift. Our goal was 40 percent, but we increased participation a bit from last year’s 35 percent. Please donate this year to keep us on this upward trajectory.

I will leave you with a bit of wisdom from Esther, as she mused on her Dartmouth years: “I wish I had reached out more at Dartmouth because, years removed, I can see how much the people I didn’t really take the time or effort to know could have taught me. I wish I had spent less time judging people and more time accepting them.” Words to live by!

—Laura Gasser, 746 17th Ave., San Francisco, CA 94121; marcklaurag@aol.com